Stewardship: A Philosophy of Life, Culture and Business

Introduction

Philosophy

Stewardship• Truth

• Economics

• Health

Solutions & Final Comments

Design or Chance

Purpose or Indifference

Philosophy

The belief that all life is equal, because our planetary relations are sacred, leads to the inevitable conclusion that it is unethical to value one life over any other. Thus, the life of one ant and the life of my child should be granted equal consideration.• Michael W. Fox DVM, former officer for HSUS

• Sacred – entitled to respect or reverence

Philosophy

One may create any world one wishes with words, the critical question is whether one would be willing to live in that world.• Adrian Morrison, An Odyssey with Animals 2009

Philosophy

Genesis 9:2,3 The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

Religion in Ag, Feedstuffs Magazine, June 2, 2014.• Dominion(authority) with Stewardship over the sheep and

oxen, beasts of the field, birds of the air, fish of the sea.

Rangelands and herbivory co-evolved as part of a natural system. Grazing is a fundamental biologic process and is the basis of the food chain. Grass evolved to be eaten. It is a renewable resource, grows from sunlight and water and needs to be harvested just like a lawn needs to be mowed. Ranchers are resident caretakers of brush, grass and grazers.

Did God make a mistake in making these grazing animals?

J. Wayne Burkhardt, PhD. Professor, Range Management University of Nevada, Reno Range Magazine Nov 2003

Stewardship Definition

Stewardship: Stewardship:

Careful and responsible management of something Careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care (noun, Webster)entrusted to one's care (noun, Webster)

Stewardship: Consumer Desires and Food Production”

What Consumers Want vs. What Production DemandsFood – Basic human right• Cost as % of income• Low income families affected the most by increased regulation and

labels. – 1934 – 24%– 2012 – 10%

• Food Choices – desired by affluent societies – Whole Foods– Sam’s Club

• Sustainability – Stewardship of Renewable resources– While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk

positions , and pay more for food produced by the so-called "organic" methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot. -Norman Borlaug, Father of the real "Green Revolution“

– “Agriculture is a business. Farming without a financial motive is gardening.” Russ Parsons, Food editor, LA Times.

What’s Changed

Demographics• Baby Boomers, Gen X (1961-1981), Gen Y (Millenials, early

80’s – early 2000’s), Gen Z.

• 317 million people, 82% live in cities and suburbs

• Fertility rate – 1.8 children/couple, 2.1 is necessary to maintain population, immigration is responsible for population growth.

• Fastest growing group, Latino/Hispanic

• 27% under 20 years of age, 12.8% age 65 and older

Stewardship: Of Truth and Food

Stewardship of Truth

As I take the students through the life of a calf, why it is raised, why we eat beef, and how to offer basic care to a food animal; I field a variety of questions. While I find each one of the students’ questions interesting, there was one yesterday that gave me pause.

A 5th grade boy asked:

How can you get the meat off of the calf without killing it?

I answered,

You can’t. The animal gives it’s life in order to provide us with nutritious food.• Anne Burkholder; Feedyard Foodie

Stewardship of TruthMy answer was met with a new level of understanding and a quiet nod. I do not think that this young man will ever look at a hamburger the same way again.

As the students completed the last station and filed off to the nearby field to enjoy a hamburger lunch, I continued to think about this question — baffled that a 10 year old boy would think that meat would be harvested off of a calf without the calf dying.

How has our society become so far removed from food production?

and perhaps more importantly…

How are we going to fix this?http://feedyardfoodie.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/cozads-ag-exposure-day/

What’s Changing:Dietary GuidelinesTime to end the war against saturated fat? • The British Medical Journal and heart disease: British cardiologist Aseem

Malhotra BMJ:

• Virtually all the truths about preventing heart attacks that physicians and patients have held dear for more than a generation are wrong and need to be abandoned.

• He cites recent research that suggests that the "obsession" with lowering a patients' total cholesterol with statins, and a public health message that has made all sources of saturated fat forbidden to the health-conscious, have failed to reduce heart disease.

How Americans Got Red Meat Wrong, The Atlantic, June 2, 2014

“Good Calories, Bad Calories” Gary Taubes

“Why We Get Fat and What to do about it” Gary Taubes

“The Big Fat Surprise” Nina Teicholz

What’s Changing: Dietary Guidelines

SWEDEN SHIFTS NATIONAL DIETARY GUIDANCE ON EATING – STEERS TOWARD LOW-CARB, LOW-GLYCEMIC FOOD RECOMMENDATIONS• Sweden has become the first western nation to recommend a

lower-carbohydrate higher-fat, diet approach to eating – as part of an effort to reduce the national prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and to improve markers of heart health.

• This bold move stems from a literature review of 16,000 studies on diet and obesity, published by Swedish government advisors at the Council on Health Technology Assessment.

What’s Not Changing

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, released on January 31, 2011, emphasize three major goals for Americans:

Balance calories with physical activity to manage weight

Consume more of certain foods and nutrients such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and seafood

Consume fewer foods with sodium (salt), saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, added sugars, and refined grains

What Should Not Change

Now Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the River to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt; they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.

Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty kors(kor = 10 bushel) of fine flour and sixty kors of meal.

Ten fat oxen, twenty pasture-fed oxen, a hundred sheep besides deer, gazelles,roebucks and fattened fowl.• I Kings 4:21-23

Stewardship & Health

Stewardship of Animal AgricultureStewardship of Animal Agriculture

Doing our part by caring for animalsDoing our part by caring for animalsthrough responsible resource managementthrough responsible resource managementand the prudent use of technologyand the prudent use of technology

Turn Back the ClockAt the Land Institute there is a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot shack that I had brought from thirty miles south. My friend Leland lived in that shack on $500 a year for twenty-nine years. That fact makes me awfully impatient with those who say that they just can’t get along on $80,000 a year. Leland has more cultural capacity than I do. He reads a lot of books. He had a little car, a Karmann Ghia that he rode around in. And he had a way of thinking about his place in the world; he was kind of a gregarious hermit, in a way. It seems to me that we’re talking about – well, it’s like that Beatles song. “You say you want a revolution… You’d better free your mind instead.” How can we bring that about? This represents all kinds of open questions to which I have no answers. • Wes Jackson, Land Institute, advocate for sustainable agriculture,

People, Patterns, and Philanthropy in Rural America, Hudson Institute July 9, 2008.

Answers?

Solutions & ThoughtsRe-engage in the disciplines of philosophy, animal husbandry and animal science (technology).• Engage with passion and articulate the purpose for which

you have been chosen.

• Emphasize the creativity and artistic gifts of our culture, our philosophy.

Truth• "I've always thought that the most powerful weapon in the

world was the bomb and that's why I gave it to my people, but I've come to the conclusion that the most powerful weapon in the world is not the bomb but it's the truth" -Andrei Sakharov, atheist, but believed in a non-scientific “guiding principle” that governed the universe and human life

Stewardship: A Philosophy of Life & Culture

Mission statement: “I have a stewardship responsibility to manage and care for available

resources; land, livestock, my personal life, while leaving behind a better place for the next generation.”

– Stokka 2012 ) )

What is a Livestock Steward?Demonstrates Commitment• Family• Community• Nation• Industry

Compassionate to those less fortunateRespectful to diverse ideas and opinionsLeader – Is sought out by others, purposefulProblem solver – does not blame others, but looks for solutions, gives others creditGrateful for the blessing of livestockPrepares for the future, lives in the present, respects the past

Summary

Philosophy• Understand and articulate what you believe and why

Stewardship

• Truth

• Land, Livestock, People

• Write your personal Stewardship mission statement

Solutions• Disciplines of science, husbandry and philosophy.

Stewardship

Beef Business“In this business of cattle raising, we exert our will, We take a calf off a poor cow and graft it onto a good one. We hobble a reticent cow until she lets her calf suck. We midwife these calves into existence, we care for them, sometimes we even risk our lives for them, and they are ultimately slated for slaughter. In this fact lies the essential irony of our work. No one forgets that a live calf is money in the bank. And yet a reverence remains. John Bell and Hungry and the calf in the cab of the pickup are not merely units of production; our connection to them is more than economic. Day in and day out we confront the messiness of this business of living; if we live with slaughter, we also live with nurture, with seasons and cycles, with birth and with death.”• Riding the White Horse Home, Teresa Jordan, 1993 Vintage Books, pg

108

Truth vs OpinionProverbs 18:2

–A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions.